Synopsis: The first book to describe an ecologically sound approach to the planning and design of communities, Design with Nature has done much over the past 25 years to shape public environmental policy. This paperback edition makes this classic accessible to a wider audience than ever before. Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 color photos and line drawings.

From Library Journal

LJ’s reviewer boldly contended that this “may well be one of the most important books of the century.” Blending philosophy and science, McHarg shows how humans can copy nature’s examples to design and build better structures. This 25th anniversary edition includes a new introduction and epilog. This remains “a pleasure to read” (LJ 10/1/69).
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

“In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance and human delight, which ecology and ecological design promise to open up for us, McHarg revives the hope for a better world.” –Lewis Mumford”. . . important to America and all the rest of the world in our struggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes.” –Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.

“. . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature of landscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection of writings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance of ecological principles in regional planning.” –Landscape and Urban Planning

In the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world by storm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields of landscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecological design. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussion of mankind’s place in nature and nature’s place in mankind within the physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiastic reviewer as a “user’s manual for our world,” Design With Nature offers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationship between the built environment and nature. In so doing, it provides nothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophical foundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumford ecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, “replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating and disappearing before our eyes.”

For those of us searching for an ecologically responsible lifestyle amid urban and suburban insanity, Bill Mollison has a real and exciting answer. This book is full of helpful advice presented in a very readable way. (The only problem might be getting stuck in the chapters on climates that don’t concern you; just skip them until later!) The groundwork philosophy of permaculture is laid first, and the book moves from there to the practical business of actually designing one. The emphasis is on letting various plant and animal species work together as much as possible, to form a basically self-sustaining system from which people can reap a continual harvest, not only of food, but of interest and self-respect. What a prospect! It is certainly a very different one from what we young people have been taught to expect from life! This volume is much more complete in both the philosophy and the practice than were the original “Permaculture One” and “Permaculture Two.” It is also much less focused on the Southern Hemisphere, which is helpful for North Americans trying to visualize their own permaculture. I can only hope that more people happen upon this book as I did and are themselves inspired to create a fulfilling life for themselves and their children.

— Wendell Berry

This is the permaculture bible, written by the great guru of permaculture. Site design issues are interwoven throughout the text.

Rural environmental planning (REP) is a method and process for citizens to plan the future of their own communities. it involves residents directly in the planning process and addresses ho impoverished communities can balance much needed economic development with environmental protection measures. The book includes a case studies illustrating how to apply REP to issues such as preserving agricultural lands, planning river and lake basins, and preserving historical sites.

How U.S. businesses can lead the nation from oil and coal to efficiency and renewables by 2050, and profit in the process

Oil and coal have built our civilization, created our wealth, and enriched the lives of billions. Yet their rising costs to our security, economy, health, and environment now outweigh their benefits. Moreover, that long-awaited energy tipping point—where alternatives work better than oil and coal and compete purely on cost—is no longer decades in the future. It is here and now. And it is the fulcrum of economic transformation.

A global clean energy race has emerged with astounding speed. The ability to operate without fossil fuels will define winners and losers in business—and among nations.

Now, in Reinventing Fire, Amory Lovins and Rocky Mountain Institute offer a new vision to revitalize business models, end-run Washington gridlock, and win the clean energy race—not forced by public policy but led by business for enduring profit. Grounded in 30 years’ practical experience, this ground-breaking, peer-reviewed analysis integrates market-based solutions across transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity. It maps pathways and competitive strategies for a 158%-bigger 2050 U.S. economy that needs no oil, no coal, no nuclear energy, one-third less natural gas, and no new inventions. This transition would cost $5 trillion less than business-as-usual—without counting fossil fuels’ huge hidden costs. It requires no new federal taxes, subsidies, mandates, or laws. The policy innovations needed to unlock and speed it need no Act of Congress.

Whether you care most about profits and jobs, national security, health, or environmental stewardship, Reinventing Fire charts a pragmatic course that makes sense and makes money. With clarity and mastery, Lovins and RMI reveal the astounding opportunities for enterprise to create the new energy era.

The Nation, Tom Athanasiou
…a book telling a tale too lovely for fiction, a lyrical, well-observed book that reports from the llanos of eastern Colombia, savannas tortured by guns and cows and cocaine, of an experiment in solar democracy in which appropriate technology is anything but a sad product on the discount tables of broken, post-sixties idealism.

Customer Comments

A reader from Washington state. , July 21, 1998
Gaviotas holds out a real hope for the future of this Planet
Come along as Alan Weisman deftly weaves the true story of one man’s dream and many peoples making. A dream of hope for our planet and belief in the triumph of many human spirits.

Gaviotas is a dream that Colombian Paolo Lugari had over 30 years ago. A dream that Paolo never let go of and with the help of an indomitable group of engineers, teachers, doctors, students, musicians and native Colombian Indians he has succeeded in accpmplishing. Blessed along the way with grants from the United Nations as well as others, they have brought that dream, Gaviotas, to fruition.

Paolo always believed that a self-sustainable community could prosper, working with nature instead of against her. To that end he found a piece of environmentally challenged land in the Savannas of Colombia and began his dream.

The engineers went to work. Their solar technology runs everything from lights to phones to water pumps and heaters to water purification plants. They discovered how to ! get solar energy from the low light of rainy days, since the rainy season at Gaviotas lasts for 8 months of the year. The children’s see-saw is used to draw water from the well. They grow their own food, then cook it with methane from cow manure.

They air conditioned the hospital with centuries old techniques using not one whit of electricity. They’ve even managed to re-establish an ancient rain forest, and a thriving renewable industry to go with it.

This would be a remarkable feat anywhere. That it was accomplished in Colombia is astounding. Colombia is as battle-scared as any nation on earth. In one decade alone over two thousand poloticians and two presidental candidates were murdered.

Through all of this Gaviotas has thrived and willingly made changes when needed. They have shared unstintingly with those in need all around the world, all the while staying consciously unarned while surrounded by battling vigilantes, government troops and guerillas.

Weisman has told the story of the Gaviotans and their accomplishments so beautifully, it is one of those rare stories that I did not want to end. And in reality it has not ended because Gaviotas continues to grow and prosper.

In a world where most of us doubt that these things can really be accomplished Gaviotas holds out a real hope for the future of this Planet.

A reader from San Andres Islands , July 11, 1998
Gaviotas Shows People Working Together CAN Make a Difference
Gaviotas describes the trials & tribulations of Environmental Improvement in a place called the LLANOS in Colombia-The book has inspired me to help fund a project to bring Internet to Schools in the Caribbean-We want to thank Alan Weisman for risking his life-That was the part in the book that was a sort of wake-up call for me personally-and bringing back the stories of people’s lives that have made an incredible difference in the preservation of our planet. The book also shows the positive and hard-working nature the Colombian people pride themselves on-yet it is never shown the way that GAVIOTAS does. All Colombianos should buy this book for their family to enjoy-and buy an extra one and send to your relatives in Colombia.

Barbara Phillips from Seattle, WA, May 4, 1998
Discover a real-life Utopia on the arid plains of Columbia.
Twenty-seven years ago, a group of South Americans envisioned a society in which limited resources would form the base of a sustainable future. To bring their experiment to life, they chose a site in the sparsely populated and nearly arid plains of eastern Colombia. They called their village Gaviotas and went on to create a host of ingenious and relatively affordable technologies. Alan Weisman produced a documentary on Gaviotas for National Public Radio in 1994. After producing his radio documentary, Weisman maintained an avid interest in Gaviotas. He returned to the village several times in the past few years, and updates the Gaviotas story in his new book: Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World. Weisman, a journalist based in Tucson, AZ, has covered some of the world’s worst ecological disasters, but when he needs his faith in the future restored, he always returns to Gaviotas where, he says, people seem to have gotten it right. This book documents the successful implemntation of a self-sufficient, harmonious, ecologically based community that is building a sustainable economy.

Gaviotas comes as close as human society can to achieving a real Utopia – and perhaps will serve as a model for a more balanced way of life for all of us.

Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature brought home the harm our society has done to the planet and became a major bestseller. Now, in this book, McKibben embarks on a journey–in the Adirondack Mountains, a Brazilian city, and a state in India–that convinces him that the world and nature can recover some of its glory.

In lyrical, penetrating essays, Bill McKibben offers an optimistic response to his bestselling The End of Nature, focusing on successful community ventures to preserve the wilderness and reverse environmental damage. From his home in the Adirondack Mountains to a city in Brazil and a state in India, McKibben searches for realistic models for the future of the planet.

Review

..focuses upon the impact and influence of vegetation..on human health and well-being. Compiling over thirty years of research conducted by researchers and practitioners in the fields of environmental psychology, horticultural therapy, landscape architecture and cross-disciplinary areas of research such as environmental behavior, Lewis weaves together the work of Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, Roger Ulrich, Mark Francis and others, with anecdotes from the author’s thirty plus years in the field. These anecdotes, many of which relate the reactions or experiences of urban gardeners, children, senior citizens, and prisoners in a county jail, serve as persuasive evidence regarding the impacts of plants on human well-being.(Landscape Journal, Vol 16, No 1, Spring 1997 (Stanton I. Jones)) — (Landscape Journal, Vol 16, No 1, Spring 1997)

..this marvelous and pathmaking book tells us exactly why “green nature” – plants, flowers, gardens, parks, landscape vegetation – is an essential part of our lives. Green Nature/Human Nature is not only an excellent synthesis of both qualitative and quantitative research that documents the bond between people and plants, it is a synthesis of the life’s work and thinking of of one of the most important figures in people-plant relationships. Charles Lewis virtually founded the field of green psychology and, along with colleagues Rachel Kaplan, Roger Ulrich, Diane Relf and others has made it a legitimate for of science and design. As a result of three decades of their work, we now have an empirical and firm theoretical basis that nature is as important to human experience as food, rest and learning…This is an accessible and readable volume that will warm the hearts and inform the minds of all gardeners. I suggest you take a copy into the garden, read a few pages, ! look around, and join Lewis in his insightful and enjoyable tour of the significance of what you see. (Community Greening Review, 1997 (Prof. Mark Francis)) — (Community Greening Review, 1997:Prof. Mark Francis)

I think you have really captured the essence of what is most important about plants for people, and in saying how much I appreciate your contribution, I also want to thank you for having devoted so much of your life to exploring these relationships so fruitfully.(Missouri Botanical Garden (letter from Dr. Peter Raven, Director.)) — (Missouri Botanical Garden: letter from Dr. Peter Raven, Director.)

What Lewis presnts in this book is an interesting and important approach to life and our interaction with plants, nature and our fellow humans. Technology and urban life have strengthened the misconception that we are in control of nature, that nature is here to serve us. We must consider ourselves as a part of nature, not apart from nature. Within the pges of this book, Charles Lewis clearly addresses this important, personal relationship to nature.(Public Garden, July 1997 (Prof. Frank W. Telewski)) — (Public Garden, July 1997: Prof. Frank W. Telewski)

From the Inside Flap

Why do gardeners delight in the germination and growth of a seed? Why are our spirits lifted by flowers, our feelings of tension allayed by a walk in forest or park? What other positive influences can nature have on humanity?In Green Nature/Human Nature, Charles A. Lewis describes the psychological, sociological and physiological responses of people to vegetation in cities and forests, as well as in horticultural therapy programs in hospitals, geriatric institutions, physical rehabilittion centers, drug rehabilitation programs and correctional institutions. He presents an evolutionary basis for the human attraction to plants. People-plant interactions are presented from two perspectives: participatory, in which the individual is involved in planting and maintaining the vegetation, and observational, in which the individual bears no responsibility for establishing or maintaining the vegetation.

In what amounts to a straighforward catalog of well-documented and tangible benefits, Lewis brings the latest and best research into plant/human interaction to bear on questions of how green nature is intertwined with the human psyche and how that interaction can lead to enhanced well-being and an appreciation of the human dimension in environmental concerns.

Lewis’s work will be essential reading for anyone interested in plants and how they affect people.

Amazon.com
Silent Spring, released in 1962, offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still exists. Rachel Carson’s book focused on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers, and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice that led to dangerous chemicals to the food source. Carson argued that those chemicals were more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans were exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death. Presented with thorough documentation, the book opened more than a few eyes about the dangers of the modern world and stands today as a landmark work. —

Nature and Ecology Editor’s Recommended Book
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is now 35 years old. Written over the years 1958 to 1962, it took a hard look at the effects of insecticides and pesticides on songbird populations throughout the United States, whose declining numbers yielded the silence to which her title attests. What happens in nature is not allowed to happen in the modern, chemical-drenched world, she writes, where spraying destroys not only the insects but also their principal enemy, the birds. When later there is a resurgence of the insect population, as almost always happens, the birds are not there to keep their numbers in check. The publication of her impeccably reported text helped change that trend by setting off a wave of environmental legislation and galvanizing the nascent ecological movement. It is justly considered a classic, and it is well worth rereading today.

The New York Times Book Review, Lorus Milne and Margery Milne
Her book is a cry to the reading public to help curb private and public programs which by use of poisons will end by destroying life on earth. … Miss Carson, with the fervor of an Ezekiel, is trying to save nature and mankind …